Sorry to go on
about it, but however cretinous this whole exercise is panning out to
be there is a serious point. Culture is now a bit of a buzz word,
especially amongst conservatives and bigots, but it still gets used
as ignorantly as the time when some chinless Cambridge inbreed or other
misused the word in front of an uppity grammar school boy
called Raymond Williams back in.. oh, maybe the 1940's. This led
Williams to look into the matter rather more seriously and he went on to
found what later became Cultural Studies (along with some similarly
uppity blacks, gays and girlies who kept redefining the term on
finding it didn't seem to include them either). And that was all
good, intelligent and positive stuff.
So different to
today, when anyone who tries to take politics seriously is told that
“nobody talks about class”, though the “nobody” who isn't
talking about it is also a tiny subculture - but sadly one which just
happens to run everything. More precisely, that “nobody” does not
want to acknowledge that class divisions are getting worse and the
local nobody cannot acknowledge that Manx society has an underclass
that is trapped from the cradle to the grave as surely as the Welfare
State project (now abandoned) was supposed to be a safety net
against such problems.
And as for race..............
In the Isle of Man
nobody in government (either the politicians or civil service
mandarins) wants to talk about race, for fear of having to consider
how racist the island still is. So maybe “culture” is little more
than an excuse to continue racist prejudice now that a more open
system of apartheid is no longer possible.
And eventually, who
decides what “Manx culture” is anyway? Certainly not ordinary
Manx residents, to whom this crap is about as relevant or
recognisable as Moon rocks.
“Ours”? No, just
“theirs” - and “they” are neither many nor approachable.
Which brings us to this
shining example of Culture as something that is a bit icky-poo and
badly needs spoon-feeding. This event has been subsidised to hell and
back, so on that basis we can safely identify it as the art bore
equivalent of a Nil By Mouth hospital patient.
Though, of course, in
the worlds of art and culture attitudes are so Catholic. Everything
that might otherwise get quietly knocked on the head seems to be a
cause celebre for some vociferous Right To Lifer. Considering how
dominated proceedings will be by acolytes of the Zombie Carpenter,
turning up to watch this show will be like being trapped in an
advocate's waiting room after a hospice death.
It sounds like the kind
of gig most would pay to get out of, not into. Be grateful, then,
that most if it takes place in the kind of god-forsaken bat
sanctuaries most of us in these enlightened days will never even be
seen dead in.
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